Sunday, July 27, 2014

It Turns Out Hamas Didn’t Kidnap and Kill the 3 Israeli Teens After All

When the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped in the West
Bank, were found late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu did not mince words. "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay," he said, initiating a campaign that eventually escalated into the present conflict in the region.
But now, officials admit the kidnappings were not Hamas's handiwork after all.
Writing for Al Jazeera, Musa al-Gharbi argued that Israel was deliberately provoking Hamas:

All the illegal and immoral actions related to
Operation Brother’s Keeper were justified under the premise of finding
and saving the missing teens whom the Israeli government knew to be dead
— cynically exploiting the tragedy to whip up public outcry in order to
provoke and then confront Hamas. This pattern of deception continues
under the ongoing military offensive in Gaza. For example, last week in
collaboration with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and Abbas, in
its efforts to alienate Hamas, Israel announced a bad-faith cease-fire proposal,
which Hamas was not consulted on and never agreed to but whose
violation supposedly justified Israel’s expansion and intensification of
the military campaign into Gaza.